Nabokov has proved English is the language of literature

[Anonymous No.18521197]

[Anonymous No.18521207]

There isn't such a thing, anon.

[Anonymous No.18521211]

>>18521207
There is.

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY3cHnRY No.18521229]

VLADIMIR NABOKOV IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE AUTHORS OF FICTION; HE WAS GENIAL & INGENIOUS, AND WRUNG THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FOR ALL OF ITS POETICAL POTENTIAL, BUT I AM NOT DELUSIONAL: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS A CHIMERICAL, MERCANTILE BABBLE; THE LITERARY LANGUAGE BY ANTONOMASIA IS THE SPANISH LANGUAGE.

[Anonymous No.18521242]

>>18521211
Why? English does have its strenghts but it is not like it doesn't have its drawbacks either. The same thing could be said about most languages. This is the case mainly because certain constructs don't work, and the reason why some works are untranslatable without a whole bunch of translation notes. Consider Cormac McCarthy, his Blood Meridian wouldn't be as good if you translate it to some other language. And there are lots of other authors like that in most languages.

You can't dissociate language from its cultural background, that is something that leads to second grade imitations.

[Anonymous No.18521246]

>>18521242
You could go and make a localization. Which are ok at best, but there is always something lost. You either lose precision or fluidity whenever you translate something.

[Anonymous No.18521467]

>>18521197
I think he said that English was a deficient language overall except for its large vocabulary.

[Anonymous No.18521475]

>>18521197
who dat

[Anonymous No.18521493]

>>18521197
SAUCE NAO

[Anonymous No.18521496]

>>18521197
Please don’t have a dick

[Anonymous No.18521502]

>>18521197
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I'M COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMINGGG

[Anonymous No.18521523]

>>18521242
What are the drawbacks of English?

[Anonymous No.18521540]

>>18521523
Cum genius knows how to write it

[Anonymous No.18521552]

>>18521502
>>18521496
>>18521493
>>18521475
do you morons not know how to reverse image search? Her name is Ayaka Miyoshi

[Anonymous No.18521575]

>>18521197
Nabakov was a true sensationalist. Not one who wants popularity, but who merely wants literary satisfaction, tingles and realismo descriptions of emotions.

[Anonymous No.18521579]

>>18521552
>Her

[Anonymous No.18521581]

>>18521197
>t. monolingual dummy

[Anonymous No.18521584]

>>18521552
So she is german

[Anonymous No.18521588]

>>18521197
He's like a 2nd tier French writer at best. Read more.

[Anonymous No.18521602]

>>18521579
if she wants to be a her then she's a her

[Anonymous No.18521606]

>>18521588
can't wait until the next Nabokov thread so I can post this comment and feel intelligent for a day

[Anonymous No.18521767]

>>18521229
It's partly because English is chimerical that it is superior as a tool of artistic expression to many other languages. It has a massive vocabulary with many, many synonyms each with a slightly different meaning. For example, its three major influences are itself, French, and Latin, which have given us this:

>Old English: folks
>French: people
>Latin: population

Many languages only have one word for this idea.

[Anonymous No.18521772]

>>18521606
Just the truth.

[Anonymous No.18521779]

>>18521772
sure

[Anonymous No.18521782]

>>18521779
Yes

[Anonymous No.18521784]

>>18521767
Never thought about it that way. Very interesting, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.18521793]

>>18521467
Nabocuckbros we got too cocky....

[Anonymous No.18521816]

>>18521588
>>18521772
>>18521782

[Anonymous No.18521824]

>OMG NABOKOV! HAVE YOU SEEN HIS PROSE?? IT'S SO GOOD!

[Anonymous No.18521832]

>>18521197

the girl from sakura gakuin(also in alice in borderland) grew up to be hot as fuck

[Anonymous No.18521871]

i remember making a /tv/ thread about this girl after watching alice in borderland. she was in the idol group sakura gakuin. she never stood out in the group because she was always covered .it's the group baby metal was in

[Anonymous No.18522114]

Nabokov? Heh. Nothin more than a second rate French author.

[Anonymous No.18522147]

>>18521197
Huh? All of his novels lean heavily on French and Russian. He didn't write a single novel in pure English.

[Anonymous No.18522171]

>IS THAT HECKIN' VLADIMIR NABOKOV?? WOW THAT'S MY FAVORITE WRITER! HE CHANGED ENGLISH FOREVER.

[Anonymous No.18522274]

>>18522171
This but unironically

[Anonymous No.18522283]

>>18522114
This but unironically

[Anonymous No.18522298]

>>18521824
>>18521588
>>18522114
Back to R*ddit.
No French author since Celine was an equal of Nabokov (not even Bonnefoy). And yes, I can read French.

[Anonymous No.18522309]

>>18522171
Those guys would hate Lolita because of the toxic masculinity of Humbert Humbert. They would hate Bend Sinister because of its comic depiction of literal child torture.

[Anonymous No.18522314]

>>18522298
>Back to R*ddit.
Why? They love Nabokov and his magical "proses" there.

[Anonymous No.18522319]

>>18522309
No, they wouldn't. They would focus on muh prose, shallow story and ignore the rest.

[Anonymous No.18522342]

>>18522319
>she reads for the plot

[Anonymous No.18522346]

>>18522342
They would.

[Anonymous No.18522376]

>>18522314
But sir, they flow!

[Anonymous No.18522455]

Nabokov, not Shakespeare or Johnson or Milton or among contemporary writers, Mccarthy or Joyce but fucking Nabokov? Are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.18522660]

>>18521767
You are full of shit, many (at least European) languages have more than one word to express a concept. I'm not saying English is bad or anything, but if you're going to argue for it's superiority (again, retarded, we're in the 21st century), this wouldn't be a good line. Also, English influenced itself? What? I'm sure you meant to say it has a Old English core, which was predominantly influenced by Romance languages and Latin (which is nothing exceptional in fucking Europe, but 'll add it anyways). By your definition, almost every language is "chimerical", they don't exist (and didn't originate) in a vacuum.

If you want to really find what makes English unique, you have to look at it's grammar, not vocabulary. It's abandonment of cases and gender made it unique and very different from the rest of the continent. Now I could talk out of my ass and theorize why that makes it a good/bad language for art and vice versa for science/analytics, but I won't since it's largely aimless.

[Anonymous No.18522960]

>>18521467
>he said that English was a deficient language
which is why it is the language of literature

[Anonymous No.18523041]

>>18521502
Hi cooming I'm anon

[Anonymous No.18523099]

>>18521824
Yeah, it is good.

[Anonymous No.18523327]

>>18523099
Nah

[Anonymous No.18523376]

>>18521229
Kys pedo

[Anonymous No.18523433]

>>18521767
It's basically a global pidgin language at this point. We might as well rename it to Common. It also has the plus of pretty much all meaningful science being conducted in it.

[Anonymous No.18523811]

>>18521197
>chink jezebal poster
>shit opinion
Not surprised. Anyways, the languages of literature are Italo-Hellenic. English is only a minor literary language because the Norman French raped it better.

[Anonymous No.18523814]

>>18522455
>Shakespeare or Johnson or Milton
>Mccarthy or Joyce

[Anonymous No.18523820]

>>18521197
Nabokov is probably the most overrated writer of the 20th century. Nothing to him. Can be skipped and you'd miss absolutely nothing.

[Anonymous No.18523895]

Shit thread.
So guise what do you think about Nabokov's "strong opinions"? Which ones are your favourites? Which ones were trash?

https://lithub.com/the-meanest-things-vladimir-nabokov-said-about-other-writers/

[Anonymous No.18524279]

>>18522660
No other European language has the lexical diversity of English. And when one came close, politicians and purist philologists caught in a nationalist frenzy took great care to neuter it (Turkish, Romanian).

>abandonment of cases and gender
This, on the other hand, is common in pidgin languages.

What a pretentious post.

[Anonymous No.18524289]

>>18523811
Can you still pay a geisha for sex? It's on my bucket list, but only if she's in the full attire otherwise I'm not paying a dime.

[Anonymous No.18524425]

>>18523433
>Common
go back to reading your DnD fantasy books

[Anonymous No.18524456]

>>18522660
I'm not saying other languages don't have synonyms or some lexical variety. They certainly do. But not as extensive as English does. To say that huge lexical variety isn't an important component of what makes a language unique and potent is ridiculous. More words = more tools to express ideas in different ways.
The abandonment of cases and genders is also something that differentiates it from other (particularly European) languages, but that doesn't decrease the importance of vocabulary. People don't read Moby-Dick because the nouns don't have genders. They read it because Melville had an unparalleled mastery of the English lexicon.

[Anonymous No.18524477]

>>18523895
Wait so I shouldn't read Henry James?

[Anonymous No.18524485]

>>18521523
One drawback that I find is that you can't form compound words like in e.g. German and Swedish.

[Anonymous No.18524492]

>>18521767
>Latin :population
This literally exists in all European languages, and it's not like there isn't plenty of French influence in e.g. German or Swedish.

[Anonymous No.18524509]

>>18524492
That's just an example of how different source languages have created a vocabulary with many synonyms that have slightly different meanings or connotations. I don't literally mean that all European languages have only one word for that specific idea.

[Anonymous No.18524528]

>>18524509
Okay. I was just pointing out that your argument could be applied to pretty much any European language so it doesn't show any advantage of English as compared to these.

[Anonymous No.18524579]

>>18524528
Here's another example. You could say something shines, flashes, glimmers, glistens, sparkles, spangles, etc. These are all originally Germanic IIRC. Or you could say it lusters, which is French. Or you could say it scintillates or coruscates, which are Latin.
Another interesting one: English has separate words for the meat of animal compared to the animal itself. The Old English words cow and pig correspond to the French beef and pork.
For any individual example I give you could point and say, "But [insert language here] also has this word/synonym," and you may be right. But on average, you will find a greater number of them in English than other languages.

[Anonymous No.18524719]

>>18524485
>you can't form compound words

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

— Cormac McCarthy, 'Suttree'

[Anonymous No.18524784]

>>18524485
>can't form compound words
McCarthy, Faulkner and Joyce made careers out of them.

[Anonymous No.18524936]

>>18524719
>>18524784
I don't think anon meant that you can't form compound words at all, just that it's not as common or natural as other languages.

[Anonymous No.18524946]

>>18523327
>he thinks purple King is an insult

[Anonymous No.18525195]

>>18524946
>purple King
Not me, but what does it mean? I would have guessed it was making fun of purple prose.

[Anonymous No.18525223]

>>18525195
You're correct. They mean he's the king of purple prose, but what I'm saying is purple prose isn't inheritantly bad. It's just like how you could call McCarthy the King of run on sentences. They're considered bad but you can do them in such a way that the come across as good

[Anonymous No.18525327]

>>18525223
Thanks for answering, but purple prose has a negative connotation (i.e. it specifically refers to bad prose that detracts from the subject matter). Ornate isn't necessarily bad, but calling something purple prose is always an insult.

That being said, I wouldn't consider Nabokov's writing purple. You can call him pretentious (but you can do that with most writers), but it's obvious he knows exactly what he's doing and isn't just carried away with his shit.

[Anonymous No.18525531]

>>18521767
gente
gentaglia
popolo
popolazione
popolino
persone
volgo
plebe
plebaglia
massa
folla

[Anonymous No.18525590]

>>18521467
A large vocabulary is the symptom of a language that doesn’t really know what to say. Therefore anything produced by the language is almost meaningless. An honest vocabulary is comprised of (potentially far less than) around 100 words, but 1000 expressions. 10 letters, but 100 phonemes, silent, in between the gaps. Silent phonemes. Overflowing vocabulary is like an unkempt garden trying to be a forest. The birds want to live in their own nests, if you get what I mean.

[Anonymous No.18525610]

>>18521229

[Anonymous No.18525633]

>>18521767
>folks
this word has been ruined

[Anonymous No.18527425]

>>18521197
language was a mistake

[Anonymous No.18527463]

>>18525590
Different words convey different nuances idiot.

[Anonymous No.18527470]

>>18525531
>massa
Massa sho nuff dun be a person yup

[Anonymous No.18527494]

>>18527470
fuck you slimy racist

[Anonymous No.18527712]

>>18527494
fuck you slimy leftist